Windows Easy Transfer

I just got me a new Dell XPS M1710 with all the bells and whistles. I thought this would be a good opportunity to try out the Windows Easy Transfer as my old Dell had Windows Vista already installed on it.

I must say, it was quite painless and pretty damn easy. Backed up to a USb removable drive, then did some basic setup on my new laptop, such as joining my work domai. I had 2 users, a local user and my domain user, both of which had the same account names as on my old laptop.

On the new laptop, I fired up easy transfer and pointed it at the backup images performed previously. It recognised my 2 accounts on my current laptop and matched them up with the profiles on the backup images. I hit transfer to grab all the data and let it run.

It all migrated perfectly, including desktop icons, Outlook accounts, one note settings. It was quite nice to not have to do all that. The backup and restore process did seem quite slow though, but if I had to do it all manually, it probably would have taken somewhat longer, with considerably more effort.

All in all, I was pretty impressed by the feature.

6 Comments

It still doesn't transfer applications though. For that you have to use beta software.

I find i easy to set up, but I am transfering between networked wireless laptops and it is PAINFULLY slow. I run last night, over 12 hours and it had not finished. One of the laptops was set to hybernate after 6 hours. This may have stalled the process as, in the morning, it looked like it was still running though showed not progress after a couple hours so I halted it.

I set it up again to run over night but this time defaulted to never hybernate. I think I saw that it was going to transfer 6 Gb, but it is still taking a LONG time and I figure it will not be completed by morning. Is this right? Sure seems like something is wrong and the speed should be greater.

I am not sure if it is *right* but its entirely possible that it is taking that long. I was on a quite fast external USb 2.0 hard disk and it took quite some time, so in general I think the process is very slow. I suspect its quite "chatty" over whatever medium you are using and over a wireless 54g, well I think its gonna take ages. I would just go out and either buy a special cable or external hard disk and do it that way.

I transferred everything from my old US-bought Toshiba running Windows XP to the UK-bought HP G70 by wireless. A couple of things went wrong: I was unable to activate browsing history in IE, and temporary internet files and cookies do not seem to be where they should be. In addition, my keyboard is in US English mode, and will not show UK layout. I have been able to overcome most of this by logging on as a second user, and copying across from User A to User B the bits I need. If I log on as User B, all is well, but User A problems remain.

Anyone else come across this glitch? I guess some high up sys or ini file has become altered (could it be by one of the security programs - Kaspersky on the Tosh, Norton trial on the HP)?

The first few times I used Windows Easy Transfer it was a breeze. That was on builds 7000, 7057 and RC1. Now I'm on legit W7 enterprise (SA version), trying to transfer a 143GB profile from a build RC1 export and it's been running for 24+ hours. The "transfer time" fluctuates between 1day 1hr all the way to 8 days. The thermometer bar is moving (sometimes). The disk lights (on firewire drive and internal drive) are blinking every once in a while, but because it locks the screen with "Do not use this computer until the transfer is complete" it's messed up.

Windows Easy Transfer can be vveerryy ssllooww... It found 245GB in my account and over 1000GB in shared. I have a spare 1.5TB so I let it run. After 4 days (yes 96 hours) and at a mig file of 748GB it said "disk error" - sorry - start over. AARRGGHH!! Use the customize and only transfer 250GB or smaller chunks. Even then it will take a day or more to transfer :( don't know why but it is very slow even on a fast external drive. I wish there was a way to xfer to an internal HDD and then pull the internal drive and use that, say in an external USB enclosure to transfer the settings back.